This summer, instead of spending days on the beach with his two young sons, Felix Williams will be sawing, splitting and stacking logs to see the family through the winter. Young Bryn and Isaac (and wife Gini, a willing helper) will be ferrying logs from Felix’s chopping pile to the unseasoned stack, and from the unseasoned stack to the seasoned and ready-for-use stack.

“Last summer it took me 10 full days – about six to 10 weekends – to prepare our wood supplies for the winter,” says Felix, a computer systems architect. “The kids did miss out on trips to the seaside, but they enjoyed helping me out with their little wheelbarrows, and it’s educational for them in terms of knowing where their heat and hot water is coming from.”

Heating the home, and also cooking, with wood is becoming an increasingly popular alternative to gas and electricity, and this winter and spring, wood-burning stove suppliers have experienced credit crunch-busting levels of demand from home owners seeking to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels, their bills and their carbon emissions.

“From late last summer, demand virtually doubled,” says Sune Nightingale of Stoves Online. “Customers had to wait 17 weeks for some types of wood burner, and 24 weeks for boiler stoves.” Bradley Stoves Sussex reported sales increases of 50-100 per cent with some models selling out completely. So, if you want a wood burner for this winter, you would do well to order one now.

“This is because they are considered to be such efficient sources of energy. They outperform both solar panels and ground source heat pumps – and they are beautiful to look at,” he says.

Before Felix Williams installed his German-made Wamsler 1100 range cooker last year, his Suffolk barn conversion was gobbling up around 100 litres of oil a week, for cooking and heating, costing him just under £4,000 a year.

“Last year, our first year of using wood, was quite expensive as I hadn’t sorted out a supply chain,” says Felix. “I have since made friends with all the local farmers, tree surgeons and anyone else who might have spare wood going cheap. Despite this year being an expensive year, I still spent far less – about £1,500 – on our year’s supply of wood.” The family use the oil-fired boiler during the summer when they turn the Wamsler off, but their oil bill has reduced to £500 a year, making a saving of £2,000 in the first year alone.

Every year, 8.5 million tons of wood are thrown into landfill and, according to the Forestry Commission, better management of Britain’s forests could produce an extra 10 million tons of wood fuel every year.

What is more, tree stocks are on the increase: while at the turn of the last century only five per cent of England was forested, by the new millennium that figure had increased to about 8.5 per cent and today it is around 12 per cent.

“Of all fuels, wood is the most accessible to individuals,” says Keith Hall, editor of The Green Building Bible (greenbuildingbible.co.uk) and owner of no fewer than three wood-burning stoves on his west Wales farm. “It is also one of the cleanest sources of energy: it is renewable and produces fewer carbon emissions than fossil fuels.”

Modern double combustion wood burners enable 90 per cent of smoke and particles to be converted to heat, keeping emissions to a minimum.

A win-win situation? “Unless you can afford to buy ready-chopped logs, it is quite hard physical work,” says Felix. “However, I actually enjoy the exercise as my job is quite sedentary.”

FEEL THE BURN

If you want a wood burner to heat part, or all, of your home, the first thing to do is to reduce your heat demand by insulating your loft and other leaky areas. There is no point in burning acres of forest to keep a draughty house warm.

The efficiency of your wood burner will depend completely on the quality of the wood you burn. Use only seasoned wood (the best age is 2-7 years-old); ash, beech, apple, birch and alder are best.

For supplementary one to two-room heating during spring and autumn, and as a booster for freezing winter periods, you will need about three to four tons of wood a year.

For serious, year-round oil and gas replacement in an averagely insulated home, you will need 4-8 tons (two to three trees) a year.

If you have some spare cash, it may be worth investing in your own woodland for coppicing. Woodlands For Sale (www.woodlands.co.uk) have areas of forest for sale from one acre to several dozen. Five and a half acres in Kent is currently going for £35,000; one and a half acres in Carmarthenshire for £15,000.

Cost: A single-room wood burner, to sit in an existing fireplace, needing minimal fitting costs, could be installed for less than £1,000; a larger wood burner with additional hotplate or small integral cooker costs from £1,500-£2,000; a wood burning range which will heat bathing water, radiators and provide for all cooking needs: £2,500-£4,000 plus £1,500-£2,000 fitting costs.